Vapour-liquid equilibrium data for binary mixtures of some new refrigerants

The acceptance of the Montreal Protocol has led to a timetable for the phasing out of chlorine-containing refrigerants and their replacement by new chlorine-free materials. For many applications a pure alternative refrigerant can not be found with the appropriate properties and refrigerant mixtures have been considered. In order to model the properties of these refrigerant blends accurate vapour-liquid equilibrium (VLE) data are required over the range of temperature and pressure of interest to the refrigeration engineer. In this paper we report VLE data for six binary mixtures of the new hydrofluorocarbon refrigerants over a wide range of temperatures and pressures. The six mixtures are: R32/R125, R32/R143a, R32/R134a, R125/R143a, R125/R134a and R143a/R134a. Results for R32/R125 and R32/R134a were obtained down to at least −30°C and were done in duplicate. The raw data were correlated to two models using Maximum Likelihood techniques. One of the models was then used to predict azeotropic compositions for three of the mixtures (R32/R125, R32/R143a and R125/R143a) and the approximate composition of a ternary saddle point azeotrope.